“Early biology: the critical years for learning” caught my eye since I began thinking about biology as soon as I started school. In addition, I believe that my teachers who were geared toward science education had the greatest impact on my elementary “mind” than the ones who were more focused on fixing my extremely poor penmanship. The focus of this article is mainly on cultivating answering questions in young students minds, rather than shutting them down.
The beginning of the article is explaining the connection between biology and learning. “Biology education starts from birth” is a broad statement to begin a journal with, yet somehow truly hits home. Children start questioning the world at a very young age, including questions about the world and animals and about other people. This is easily demonstrated by the dreaded “mommy where do babies come from” question no parent wants to hear. The researchers in this article argue that instead of running away from these questions that young children ask, we should focus our curriculum on them. If a student asks about clouds and why they are in different shapes, we should change our lessons to completely address the question at hand. The article explains that although young children may not have the advanced vocabulary of secondary school children, they are still asking questions that need to be addressed with the same importance.
The article then shifts to identifying problems in the education system that stops learning about biology at a young age. Elementary school teachers are very focused on the big picture, rather than the smaller details. They have main steps to cover and do not want to go into details of photosynthesis. Instead children are usually led to form basic ideas such as plants don’t need to eat, or babies come from god. Children often form their own ideas about concepts that aren’t explained thoroughly to them. When I was a child I thought that rain was held above the clouds as in buckets, and when they separated rain spilled out. No one really explained to me how clouds worked until I was in 3rd grade. This took a long process of unlearning information, which as supported by the research in the article, proves to be a difficult task.
Overall I believe that this article is helpful for teachers of all ages. Elementary school teachers are often overwhelmed by questions from students, some pointless, but some may be beneficial to the students to address. There is no need to explain topics that the students are incapable of comprehending, but as the article suggests, not addressing the questions leaves students believing that their ideas are either stupid or that they should come up with their own answer. Not addressing the questions can often lead to an incorrect conclusion drawn by the student, which proves to have implications when teaching higher levels of science, most often in biology.
The beginning of the article is explaining the connection between biology and learning. “Biology education starts from birth” is a broad statement to begin a journal with, yet somehow truly hits home. Children start questioning the world at a very young age, including questions about the world and animals and about other people. This is easily demonstrated by the dreaded “mommy where do babies come from” question no parent wants to hear. The researchers in this article argue that instead of running away from these questions that young children ask, we should focus our curriculum on them. If a student asks about clouds and why they are in different shapes, we should change our lessons to completely address the question at hand. The article explains that although young children may not have the advanced vocabulary of secondary school children, they are still asking questions that need to be addressed with the same importance.
The article then shifts to identifying problems in the education system that stops learning about biology at a young age. Elementary school teachers are very focused on the big picture, rather than the smaller details. They have main steps to cover and do not want to go into details of photosynthesis. Instead children are usually led to form basic ideas such as plants don’t need to eat, or babies come from god. Children often form their own ideas about concepts that aren’t explained thoroughly to them. When I was a child I thought that rain was held above the clouds as in buckets, and when they separated rain spilled out. No one really explained to me how clouds worked until I was in 3rd grade. This took a long process of unlearning information, which as supported by the research in the article, proves to be a difficult task.
Overall I believe that this article is helpful for teachers of all ages. Elementary school teachers are often overwhelmed by questions from students, some pointless, but some may be beneficial to the students to address. There is no need to explain topics that the students are incapable of comprehending, but as the article suggests, not addressing the questions leaves students believing that their ideas are either stupid or that they should come up with their own answer. Not addressing the questions can often lead to an incorrect conclusion drawn by the student, which proves to have implications when teaching higher levels of science, most often in biology.
Tunnicliffe, S., & Ueckert, C. (2011). Early biology: the critical years for learning. Journal Of Biological Education, 45(4), 173-175.
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